The Smithsonian Institution’s longstanding “Museum on Main Street” (MoMS) program opened a new exhibition at the Wyoming State Museum in Cheyenne last month.
It’s called “Voices and Votes: Democracy in America” and features an interactive exhibit exploring the American experiment over the past 250 years.
“Museum on Main Street” is part of the Smithsonian Institution Travelling Exhibition Service (SITES). The outreach program partners with local museums to bring educational programming across the country. Since 1994, it’s reached more than 2,200 communities.
“Voices and Votes” exhibits have already been installed in small towns around the country. In Wyoming, it made its first appearance in Sheridan, and is now on display in Cheyenne until Aug. 8. The exhibit details the Revolutionary War, the framing of the U.S. Constitution and how citizens of Wyoming have participated in politics.
Kevin Ramler, supervisor of exhibits and programs at the Wyoming State Museum, said the exhibition not only examines national politics, but local politics, too.
“From there, it kind of branches out to look at the ways that citizens are engaged in governance in the U.S.,” Ramler said. “It looks at what they call the machinery of democracy—the evolution of the party systems, how they support candidates, why some people oppose them and why some people support them.”
The Smithsonian provides most of the components of the exhibits, but it’s supplemented with historical items specific to each state. The Wyoming State Museum is highlighting one important part of Wyoming’s history by adding a flag honoring the state’s suffragists.
The flag details the story of the 1869 Women’s Suffrage Act, which granted Wyoming women the ability to vote and hold public office. Twenty years later, as the territory began calling for statehood, delegates debated at length the inclusion of women’s suffrage in the new constitution. It was accepted, and Wyoming became the 44th state and the first to guarantee women’s right to vote. The flag, then presented by suffragist Esther Hobart Morris to Gov. Francis Warren, lives in the museum today.
Ramler said this exhibition is particularly important to Wyomingites because of America’s 250th birthday. He says he hopes the program will inspire viewers to take action in local politics.
“I think it's just a great time, with the 250th anniversary, for us to be looking backwards and see how far we've come as a country,” Ramler said. “Representative government only works if people are engaged and involved. There's a lot of different ways to be involved in improving our communities and making them the places that we want to live.”
The exhibition started during the first Trump administration, when executive orders requested intense oversight of the Smithsonian and its museums. The orders didn’t target the “Voices and Votes” exhibit explicitly, but challenged other democracy-related Smithsonian exhibits. The exhibition has been touring now for six years uninterrupted. Ramler says people still find it valuable and interesting.
